Keep summer colour f or longer

AS the days shorten and the summer palette softens, gardens can be revived with an injection of colour.

Goldenrod will help borders sizzle until the fiery flames of autumn kick in. It comes in sunny shades and red hot pokers, with glowing tips to yellow flower spikes.

Follow these with rust, wine-red and tawny-orange blooms of helenium, coneflowers, yarrow, penstemons, sedums, kaffir lilies and crocosmia.

Edible daylilies, or hemerocallis, come in various colours and stretch out the season. Combine golden and copper shades from repeat-blooming or late varieties against a backdrop of bronze fennel. By full summer this will have reached its full height of two metres and will be carrying umbels of yellow flowers. They are irresistible to bees and hoverflies.

Partner bronze fennel with rust coloured Verbascum Clementine, dark red-leaved sedums and Verbena bonariensis and cut off seedheads to prevent them becoming a nuisance.

If you prefer a softer look, consider echoing the rich salmon colour of Achillea Lansdorferglut with Sedum Autumn Joy and Japanese anemones against Hydrangea macrophylla.

Whiskery

QFor the best pink-toned hydrangea blooms on acid soils, you will need to apply a handful of lime every year in late November and early March or they will turn a murky purple.

Some plants have wonderful seedheads such as clematis Bill Mackenzie,

which produces whiskery ones at the same time as the yellow lantern-like flowers. Although vigorous, it is slim-fit and can be squeezed into a tiny space.

Ornamental grasses produce decorative seedheads too. Miscanthus last well into autumn and others display excellent colour.

Japanese blood grass has swordshaped leaves that emerge green then turn red in summer, deepening to a darker crimson in autumn.

It is excellent for edging beds or paths and also works well next to water features. You will find it looks stunning if you plant en masse against a dark backdrop.

Giant oat grass is one of the best flowering grasses. Erupting like fountains from the ground, it will provide an airy contrast to petal-packed blooms like dahlias.

For best effect, plant it where the golden flowers will catch the light and in a breezy spot, to add movement.